Objective:
The objectives of this research are to: 1) Improve accuracy, reproducibility, and ease of measuring/estimating feed digestibility for fiber and protein for use in developing feeding strategies for improving animal performance; 2) Develop rapid methods for measuring feed qualities to improve on-farm precision of feeding; and 3) Establish methods to measure feed characteristics of nutritional relevance in dairy cattle diets.

Approach:
The approaches for the diverse projects in this research will also be diverse. They will include evaluation of feed evaluation equipment and methods used on the farm and in the laboratory to measure specific feed components or their digestibility. We will compare the results of the experimental approaches to values for the feed components measured with standard measurement systems, or to digestibility data from studies with dairy cattle.